In every preview gallery I look at now the images look blurry and lacking detail when using the slideshow function. Only when you click 'download original' do you see the full sharpness (whether at 100% or downscaled by the web browser).

Was it always like this? I seem to remember being impressed by certain preview galleries looking at the only the slideshow. So I thought it was a reliable way to asses the image quality of cameras and lenses. But after being disappointed recently by what I thought was the quality of several lenses and cameras that I initially assumed would be excellent, i finally realised that it is the downscale making the images look so poor.

Has the quality of the downscale got worse recently or has my eye for detail improved? How do camera and lens manufacturers feel about their products being represented so poorly on a resource that is supposed to be respected by professional photographers? Image quality should be the number one priority on this website bar non.